Ranekaera
by Ranekaera
Summary: New chapter is up, and the band and the guests hang backstage, let it all hang out! R& R PLEASE! CHAPTERS EDITED AND REVISED!
1. intro

Hi, this is a sort of playoff of another story I have down on paper but don't see the point in retyping it up. It's pretty good, so please enjoy!

Zavier Young

The crowd swelled and screamed as they waited for the Destroyers to come out and play.

Guppie was already on his drum kit out on stage and the others were still backstage doing

last-minute touch-ups on their makeup. Then Freddy walked out, followed by the

Siamese twins, guitarist Kou and Adrian and the wolf-like bassist Xavyer Black.

"ARE YOU READY TO ROCK??" screamed Freddy through his headset. The crowd

swelled and the lights overhead momentarily blinded the youngish lizard monster. Freddy

resembled a short, light blue monster sort of like a komodo dragon or a gecko on two legs

with dyed blue hair and several piercings through his face. He was 27 and the lead singer

for the monster world's most popular metal band, the Destroyers.

Xavyer Black sighed unheard, and hooked up his huge, blue electric bass guitar.

Blacky, as the fans called him, was about 9'7'' and weighed in at about a ton. He was

covered in head to foot in thick black and smoke colored fur like a wolf. He had four

arms, two tails and piercing blue eyes that, contrasting sharply with his black fur, made

him an intimidating individual.

The Siamese twins, Kou and Adrian, made faces and roared at the crowd, which was

going wild. The twins were young, the youngest in the band at about 22 years old. They

both resembled eels from the neck up, but their lower halves were those of squid or

octopi-like monsters. They each would have hade four arms like Guppie, had they not

been connected fast to each other at the side of the chest. They electrified their own guitar

and Adrian, the one who played the strings, gave it a precursory power chord that made

the walls of the stadium shake. The crowd screamed. The twins were both a bright red

with splotches of a molten color all over them.

Last but not least, Guppie. Guppie was a slightly smaller version of the twins, but

single, four arms, no skeleton, dark green and with long brown dreadlocks. He had lamp-

like yellow eyes and he, of course, was the drummer. He gave a loud drum solo before

the others started playing with all four arms and a few of his eight tentacles and the show

began!

Hope you like this chapter! The story isn't entirely about the band, but just wait! I am currently working on a sequel with Reptilian Goddess, so this story may take a while to write. Have patience!


	2. show's over

Hi, Zavier here. Just to let you guys know, when the name Ran is mentioned, it's not referring to everyone's favorite lizard monster! Sorry! Oh, and there's a little hint of foreshadowing here!

In the crowd, sweat poured and bodies danced. The feverish pitch of the music was deafening in

the enclosed space and the crowd was moshing and crowd surfing and others were just content to

head bang and jump around. Onstage, Freddy was screaming and swearing and dancing and

walking back and forth across the stage, taunting the crowd. Blacky shook his fur out of his eyes

and roared into a microphone, spreading the webbed membranes stretching from his upper arms

wide. His slap-bass was loud and made a crunchy sort of percussion sound that not quite blended

with Guppie's drumming. They had already done a song, called All Alone. They were about to

start on one Freddy liked to call Birth of a Goddess, depicting the old legends from the Viking

days about a sea goddess who would someday come and reclaim the oceans once again.

Backstage, the sound crew was watching the equipment and making sure no irate fans came

backstage and messed with anything.

The band continued to play in this manner for the next hour and a half or so, then began the

song that would close the show for the night.

Meanwhile…

Unbeknownst to the band and all the fans, there _was_ a sea goddess. Her name was Ranekaera, or

Ran for short. She had come from a background of abuse and neglect, torment and grief, for she

had lost her family long ago. She's been shipped from placement to placement after that, her

powers growing stronger, for the past fifteen years. She had stopped aging at sixteen and she

would not grow any older. (I'll explain all this in the next few chapters, don't get confused).

She had finally escaped her uncle's house in the neighboring town, just half a mile away.

She was tired, underfed, and much too thin and she was also severely cold. She resembled

Freddy in some aspects, except that she was a pure snow white color, with skin as slippery as a

seals, but softer, like valor. She had torn, jagged looking wings that a human might compare to a

fairy's. Her tail ended in a large-ish fin like a whale's or a mermaid's and she had a pouch on her

belly like a kangaroo's.

And she was extraordinarily beautiful, with dark red hair and odd eyes.

She wandered into the parking lot of the civic center and saw the large, lit-up tour bus and made

her way towards it. The icy wind tore at her hair and the very thin t-shirt she wore. She knew

where she was but she didn't know what she was going to do. Now, considering all she had seen

and been through, she knew a lot that other 16 year olds didn't. Like the world never understood

what you were trying to tell them and when they finally did, they were either horrified and tried

to stop it, or they didn't know what to say.

"I'm so cold." She whimpered. Her voice was very deep for a female's.

The tour bus was painted a dark green with slashes of black everywhere. On the side, the words

Destroyers had been slashed across in bright red paint. She was from the human world, but she

had heard of the Destroyers. That was just a mark of how popular they were.

It started to rain, which made Ran a little happier, but didn't help much.

She felt the snow coming and she let it snow, not caring that she controlled it and could stop it if

she so desired. She was too cold to care. Even though she was a mammal, she was freezing to

death.

She collapsed, unconscious, in front of the doors.

Meanwhile…

"Hey, Freddy! C'mon, let's go!" shouted Guppie. The tour manager, Mike, a demon monster

with a human-like appearance, yelled. The crowd was already leaving and if they weren't, the

security guards were kicking them out. The Destroyers were hard to get a hold of or book for a

show, so people stayed at the end of a concert. Freddy was helping the sound crew load up

Guppie's drum kit and Guppie was helping the twins lug all the speaker equipment back into the

truck that was backed up to the emergency doors backstage. The rest of the sound crew was

helping out too. The room was almost emptied out and the security guards watched and chatted

amongst themselves as the band talked. All they wanted was to get back on the bus and party

after a show well done.

They were about to get more.

What's about to happen next? I'll explain all about Ranekaera, for whom the story is named, so don't worry! If you haven't noticed, this isn't even a fan fic, it's a book I wrote and made up everything for myself. Please review, I love reviews! Everything will make sense soon after she wakes up…in the next two chapters


	3. fine she can come

Hey, in this chapter, the guys hop on the tour bus and discover Ranekaera outside. Mostly, I'm just giving you a feel for what the main characters are like.

"Hey Guppie, where you want this bass drum? The space near the driver's seat's already

taken!" shouted the tour coordinator, Todd. They were lugging all the cases for

everything outside into the parking lot and Todd was having some difficulty figuring out

where to put everything. The storage compartment could only hold so much and the

equipment trucks were already full with the electronics and stuff, plus the rest of the

sound crew. The Destroyers almost never took on roadies, because of their sluttish

reputations.

My name is Flounder Drake, or Guppie, as everyone calls me. Throughout this story, I

will be the narrator, like it or not. I am 27 years old, I have no children, no girlfriend, I

am the drummer in this band and I will be your host tonight.

I took his other bass drum from Todd and lashed a few tentacles around it. I stuffed it

into the back of the tour bus' compartment and dusted my hands off, smiling at Todd.

God, I wanted a beer. My throat was all parched and my gills felt all mucky with the

mucous my body naturally secreted when I was overheated. It smelled like chlorine and

is considered B.O. in the monster world.

"Hey Guppie! C'mon, leave it to the crew, huh? Ya' want a beer?" shouted Freddy. I

snapped my head at the mention of a cold one and immediately flopped towards the bus

doors. I stopped short, however, when I spotted something that shouldn't have been there.

It was all white and from where I was standing in the slowly fading twilight, it looked

like a big puddle of bodily fluid. (no guesses what kind)

"What the…" I muttered, peering closer at it. My thick, spiky dreadlocks got in my

face and I impatiently brushed them away.

Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a girl, her body a pale bluish-white.. She

wasn't moving.

"_Holy shit!_ Hey, Freddy!" I exclaimed.

Freddy poked his head out the window, his long, straight-as-paper hair falling out around

his shoulders, and said

"What?"

"There's a woman out here, halfway under the doors to the bus." I told him, a little

panicked. What if the woman was dead? I asked myself.

"So? Tell'er to go away before we call for security." Said Freddy, undaunted. He'd

washed all his makeup off and was playing with one of his lip rings.

"I think she's unconscious, dude. I think we should bring'er inside before she freezes

to death, she looks like she could be a reptile." I told him.

"_What?_ Ohh, bring her in, but I'm telling you now, she'd better not be cute." He said,

half jokingly. Freddy was 26 and had a two year old little girl, Heather.

I stepped right up to the girl and gently swept her hair off her face. She was sprawled

there, as if she'd just collapsed on two legs, and her head rested on one of her

outstretched arms. She felt cold, although I noticed her skin was impossibly soft.

"Up an' at'em." I sighed as I bent down and carefully picked her top half up behind the

neck. Her head lolled and I had a good look at her face. Her eyes were closed and there

was a darkening bruise over one eye. In fact, it looked as if she'd been beat all over.

Bruises of varying shades littered her entire body and a few thin, shallow scratches here

and there signified that she'd fought back, and viciously so.

I picked her lower half up behind the knees and let her tail drag behind me, mingling with my tentacles behind, almost tripping me up. I carried her onto the bus and the twins

hurried over when they saw what I was carrying.

"Holy shit, who the hell is that?" exclaimed Kou, Adrian's not-too-bright brother.

"Dunno. She was laying half under the doors. Feel her, she's ice cold." I replied. I gently

set her down on one of the seats we'd had custom extended. The whole bus was custom

designed. The seats were mostly removed and the ones that remained had been modified

to form little half seats or full beds bolted into the floor. Freddy hurried over as well and

took one look at her and sighed.

"Why am I so vulnerable to women?" He asked sarcastically.. I laughed and elbowed

him with my lower arms.

"Maybe it'd just you're fame, Freddy. Y'know, that little dollar sign?" I teased.

"Aw, shut up, man." He laughed. Just then, Xavyer, or Blacky, padded out from the

bathroom on all six and sniffed the bundle in my arms. He recoiled, wrinkling his nose.

"She smells drunk." He said disgustedly.

Freddy bent forward and opened one of her eyelids.

"Her pupils are normal and the whites of her eyes aren't bloodshot or yellow, she's

sober. Feel her pulse, too." He observed. He had a little problem with drinking and was

working to stop, for Heather's sake if not his own.

"Whatever, dude. I'll be in my little area." said Blacky. He was always a little

withdrawn, unless he was drunk, in which case he was hilariously funny. For a guy his

size, that was good.

"I'll set her down over here, huh? Unless of course you smartasses would rather I just

hold her 'till she wakes up?" I said sarcastically. Freddy was getting a few beers out of the little porta-freezer we kept on board as I talked.

"Hey, yeah, that's be great, Guppie. Then when she wakes up and sees your ugly face,

she can slap you and we'll all have a good laugh." said Adrian, teasing me. I took a swing

at him with a free tentacle and he ducked, pulling his conjoined twin with him. Freddy

tossed the twins a beer and Adrian chugged his. Freddy took a drink and sat back in a

reclining seat.

I set her down as carefully as I could on one of the extended bed-like seats and stepped

back as her head moved a little.

"Hey, I think she's coming around." I said optimistically.

Just then, Mike poked his head in to say we had to leave for the next town if we wanted

to make it on time.

"But we got a little problem here. We found another passenger on the ground outside,

that is, Guppie found her." said Freddy, walking towards him. Mike sort of resembles a

frog on two legs with bright yellow and neon green spots and a kickass mohawk in

different colors. Despite his appearance, he was a pretty wise guy, always making sure

we were on time. He was made for the managing business.

"Age?" he asked.

"Well, she's unconscious at the moment, so we don't know. I'd say she looks

abooouuuut… eighteen or nineteen at the least." said Freddy. Mike looked thoughtful a

moment, then sighed, giving Freddy a reminding glance that clearly said 'we don't need

this again'. Once, Freddy had wanted to bring a friend along, and it'd ended with said

friend stealing money out of our budgets and taking off with it.

"Fine, but never again, Freddy. We don't need another incident like last time. I can squeeze her into the budget and call ahead to the hotel to make room for an extra body, so

get ready, we leave in about two minutes, whether the girl wants to go or not." He said

professionally.

He left and Freddy's brother Damon came on board. Damon is deaf and doesn't talk

very well, but he's really quite intelligent. One time, he even managed to fix a technical

problem with the bus' engine, something I could never manage to do without frying it

and myself in the process. Unlike the twins, I can't handle too much of my own

electricity.

Freddy and he exchanged thumb up and Damon started the bus with a loud roar. The

thrum of the engine could be felt all over and the girl made some sort of whimpering

sound. Freddy, the twins and I all turned towards her as we felt the bus warming up. The

doors closed and the radio came on, softly, but loud enough to hear.

"So what should we do with her?" asked Freddy.

"I dunno, why don't you screw her?" sneered Blacky. He's usually a little bitter about us

having relationships because he's so protective of us all. We're the only family he has

because he grew up in an orphanage since the age of about four. When he's not being

cold and uncommunicative, he's either reading or listening to his walkman.

"Shut the up, Blacky." Freddy snapped. He'd done that before, too, with the

previous roadie that'd apparently been easy on the eyes.

"Why don't we let her audition?" suggested the always- optimistic Kou. Kou loves his

brother, loves life and hates seeing anyone alone and friendless. Adrian hates that and

basically just wants to be left alone, although he does enjoy the attention that being

conjoined twins gets them.

"Maybe, if she can play anything. We don't need another drummer, but we could use

an extra singer or guitarist." Said Freddy, carefully picking her tail up and placing it in

her own arms. The end of it fell open to reveal very spiky fins, like a mermaid's tail. I bet

they were sharp and could be whipped open with the speed of a switchblade, as the ones

lining my back could.

Suddenly, the girl moved, slowly at first, then she began moaning and clenching her

fists.

"Hey, she's waking up!"

Hope you liked this chapter, although it was sort of long. In the next one, we find out what Ran's story is and why she was where she was.


	4. Tragedy

The girl sat up slowly and opened her eyes. They were a little too large for her face and one was green, the other a pale gray-blue. There was a small, thin scratch under one eye and she blinked a few times under the fluorescent lighting.

"Hey, kid, what were you doing under the bus?" asked Freddy. He looked a little amused and not the least bit concerned. It was obvious she'd been beaten.

She didn't answer, just looked around a little groggily. I wondered if she wasn't really drunk.

Blacky padded over, setting his walkman down on one of the seats. The girl saw him and her eyes widened. She looked a little freaked, then calmed a little when she saw…that maybe he wasn't who she thought he'd be. Like she woke up and thought he was someone or something else…

"Hey, kid what's your name?" he asked, his deep, throaty voice sounding more like a growl than anything.

"Ranekaera." She replied. She had a deep voice for a girl, husky and a little sexy.

"What were you doing under the bus?" repeated Freddy.

"I got away…My uncle was beating me again. I got cold and I guess I…fell asleep." She replied.

"Fell asleep? You were out cold!" I exclaimed. She looked over and up at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Where am I?" she asked.

I put a hand on her shoulder and swept the bus with one of my other hands.

"We're the Destroyers. And this is our tour bus. I found you outside, and I couldn't just leave you out there. Mike said you could come along." I informed her.

She put her face in her hands and tried to stand up. She fell back into the seat with a fwump, her tail between her legs. She had a pouch on her belly like a kangaroo, although she looked nothing like one. I could see more scars on her belly above the pouch line, and what looked suspiciously like a line of bright blue stitches.

"Hooooooolly shit…" I muttered. I reached into Freddy's ripped jean vest and pulled out his cell phone.

"Hey, kid, take it easy. Hang on a sec. You hungry?" asked Kou. Adrian for once didn't contradict him.

"Ranekaera, what's your uncle's number?" I asked. She pooched her lower lip out like a small child and shook her head stubbornly.

I sat down next to her, gently nudging her aside with my thighs.

"Hey, c'mon, I gotta talk to whoever did this to you, kid." I urged her.

"You don't understand. I've lived with my uncles for three years now. They always beat me. They're human and you can't have the number." She protested. She turned to look at me and I could see things in her eyes that she wanted to tell us all, things she didn't think we'd ever understand. I knew how she felt. I had a lot of hardship in my past, too, and I could never share that with the rest of the band.

Freddy kneeled down in front of her and the twins splotched down on the floor where they stood. Blacky returned to his seat and listened from over there. He had hearing to put the rest of us to shame.

"Start at the beginning." I said gently. She sighed and pulled her hair behind her neck, out of her face. Freddy whistled and I could see that even Blacky was a little daunted by her looks. I thought it should be illegal to be so beautiful.

"Okay. My name is Ranekaera Dunbar. I had four other siblings and my mother raised us all on her own. We lived all over Maine, but mostly in Waterboro in this shitty little blue trailer. My twin brother Kurtis and I raised hell wherever we went. We were anarchic.Wherever my brother was, I'd follow.

"When we were ten, we were camping out in our backyard, under this truck cap that was back there. There was this huge fire." She hesitated.

"Oh." I mumbled. Fire…

"_Flounder!" Mommy screams. I can't see through all the smoke. "Daddy!" I shriek. Where was Mommy? Where was Sissy? I couldn't breath!_

_Flames leapt and danced, eating the curtains, the counters, my clothes and my hair. I coughed and wheezed. _

"_Flounder! Flounder, where are you? Flounder!" I can hear Daddy cry. He sounds far away._

"_Daddy!"_

I shake my head, ridding myself of the flashback when I was four. I never would forget the fire I'd accidentally set that killed my mother. I continued to listen to Ranekaera.

"My brother and I ran up to the house to see if we could get anyone out, but I was scared. Kurtis ran right inside, so I followed him. He shoved me back so hard that I fell through the porch railing. That's the only time I can ever remember him ever hurting me.

I screamed at him, told him he was being an idiot, but he didn't listen and didn't turn back. I never saw him again." She paused.

"Oh, man. That's so sad…" sniffed Kou. Adrian had his head bowed and I don't know what the others read on my face, but I was sure it was probably upset and sorrow.

"After the fire died out, my family was dead. The house was obliterated. I had nowhere else to go and the state picked me up and sent me to an orphanage."

At the word orphanage, Blacky perked right up, shifting uncomfortably.

"From there I was shipped from group home to group home until after three years of the torment, a few uncles from the UK finally laid claim. I was sent there, but they're no better. They beat me. And tonight I got away." She finished.

We were all silent a moment, when I finally said "I'm sorry, Ran. Really. I know what it's like to lose family to a fire."

"There's one other thing." She said quietly.

"Blacky, get'er a soda." Instructed Freddy distractedly. Blacky got up, lurched a little from the movement of the bus, and got into the cooler to do as he asked.

"What?" asked Blacky as he handed it to her. She popped it open and took a long swig.

"Thank you. My throat hurts from when I was screaming at them." She said hoarsely. She really _did_ almost sound like a boy.

She reached into her pouch and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it and showed it to us all. It was a family tree, going back what looked like-

"-B.C.!" exclaimed Freddy, a look of genuine surprise on his youngish face.

"Before B.C. otherwise, it wouldn't all fit on this piece of paper. It goes onto the back, too." She explained.

"And that's a complete family tree?" asked Blacky. He flopped down onto the floor, his tails curled around him.

"My family also has a sort of a curse." She announced.


	5. Explanations

"A curse? What kind of curse?" asked Freddy. The overhead light glinted off his many facial piercings, making him look more sinister than he really was. Blacky was still apparently unconcerned.

The girl sat up and blinked slowly, taking in her new surroundings. Suddenly the bus began to move and she looked scared at first.

"Where are we going?" she asked., She had a surprisingly deep voice for a girl.

"Wherever our next gig is, and don't worry; none of us is going to hurt you." I assured her. _Great, first Guppie the murderer, then Guppie the drummer, now I'm Guppie the parent. What next? Guppie the mime? _I thought sarcastically.

"M-My name is Ranekaera. I came here through the portal I set up to get away from my uncles. I guess I got cold and just… fell asleep." She said, wrapping her arms around herself. Freddy reached over and yanked a spare blanket out from under a pile of clothes, papers and microphones. He's very unorganized.

"Here, wrap up in this. You look half dead." He said grimly. She managed a weak smile and took it from him. She shuddered.

"You created a portal? What, like a door?" I asked.

"I guess I should start from the beginning, huh?" she muttered to herself.

"Please do." I invited. She sat up a bit straighter and cleared her throat.

"Throughout history, from the very beginning of time, there were five deities. One for earth, air and fire and two for water, always twins." She began.

"Why twins?" asked Kou.

"There's more water than anything else on this planet so it takes more than one person to properly maintain and control it." She replied. She didn't _sound_ drunk.

"The deities lived well for awhile, created all the life, so it could evolve into what exists now, but there was a problem. From the fatigue of creating so much, their life forces were depleted and they began to age. They were no longer immortal. They had no choice but to interbreed with their own creations to save the bloodline. Every eight generations, a new deity is born, one for each of the four elements."

She continued. I tried to store this in my mind in a way I could understand. What did all thins have to do with her?

"My brother and I were the new deities of water for the eight generation of 1988."

"Woa, woa, woa, time out. Are you on drugs, Ranekaera?" ejaculated Freddy.

"No."

"Hey, I remember now! Remember all those stories about the sea goddess dad used to tell us, Aid?" blurted Kou. Adrian looked as if he'd rather not reminisce. All eyes were on them now. I folded my arms, all four of them, and leaned against the side of the bus, waiting.

"What about them?" asked Adrian.

"Oh, nothing. Her story reminds me of them, that's all." He said.

"The water monsters would know the story, of course. They're the only elemental ones who are still close enough to the water to remember the old legends." said Ranekaera.

"So lemme get this straight. Every eight generations a god or goddess is born to each element?" asked Freddy.

"Yes."

"You and your twin are water?"

"uh-huh."

"Where is he? Why are you all covered in bruises? What portal? How?" he nearly screamed in exhasperation. I could tell that these questions plainly tormented him.

"The fire that killed my family also killed my brother, I told you before. I buried them myself and later found out that the fire'd been set. The place'd been flooded with gasoline at my mother's end and the baby'd already been dead before the fire was started." She explained.

"What are you trying to say?" I asked uneasily. I thought I knew where this was going.

"My mother suffocated Asheline. She set the fire that killed my brother and sister." She said.

A stunned silence followed, then Blacky burst out laughing.

"Oh, please! What melodramatic bullsh! You'd be very good in the movie industry." He laughed. Ran looked affronted and it could've been me, but I swore I saw her odd colored eyes flash a bright white.

"I'm not making any of this up." She said quietly. Her voice was cold and Blacky stopped laughing immediately.

"When my brother died, he transferred his "powers" to me, making me stronger both physically and…well…Goddess-ie, if that makes any sense."

"It doesn't." I joked.

"As Sea Goddess, I control everything from the lowliest mud puddle to the water contained in your bodies. I can affect blood flow, I can stop severe bleeding and I can easily go between both worlds as I please." She said.

"Why, because your ancestors created them?" asked Adrian. He was getting interested.

Outside, it was getting very dark and we were somewhere in the middle of the country now. The equipment trucks were ahead of us and the bus was towing Blacky's huge truck.

"I guess you could say that. I escaped here because at home, my uncles…beat me. One is Schizophrenic and the other is his caretaker. I …they don't like me. Actually, no one in the human world likes me because I'm not human. I was born human, but thanks to some friends, I mutated into this." She explained.

Freddy whistled and Ran shivered again. It struck me jus then just how thin she looked.

We drove on in silence, digesting her information.

"What happens if one of them dies, again? I forgot that part." said Kou, probably remembering old stories his dad told him when he was a kid.

"If any of the deities should die before their eight generation prodigy has been born, depending on their element, the world will end." She said. This sounded a bit Old World to me, like 'the sky is falling' or 'the devil is my dad'. It sounded absurd. I was an atheist, but even this sounded a little odd to me. As for the fire…I believed that, I _had_ to believe that. I shuddered inside at my own memories of fire. My mother…I shook my head and gave myself a mental slap.

Freddy and Blacky both laughed and Ran glared.

"My existence, my very well-being affects the weather and the water. If I died or blacked out or something, my perception of what weather is right for the climate, of what is natural, would go haywire, resulting in violent thunderstorms. From bright sunshine to sudden, unexplainable water typhoons. From slightly overcast to torrential downpour in seconds. If I died, the landmass would be enveloped in tons of seawater. Only the ones with gills would survive." She explained hurriedly. She sounded so _absolute_, so…_serious_, that we were all taken aback. She wasn't kidding?

Looking rather nervous now, Freddy swallowed and asked "So, uh…You're the Sea Goddess, you came here through a portal you made to get away from your uncles who beat you? I got that right so far?"

"Yes." She replied. I sighed and snaked a tentacle behind Freddy into the porta-cooler. I grabbed a cold can of soup and a can opener and got to work, grabbing a bowl out of the little cupboards Blacky installed himself. I threw it in the microwave on board and,. Seeing the look on my fellow band mates' faces, said "Soup for her. She looks half starved."

"Oh." Said Freddy. The soup dinged, I gave it to her, she said thanks and I leaned against the wall once more. I wasn't sure whether to believe her or not. She was convincing enough..

From the looks on the other guy's faces, they didn't know either.


	6. An unexpected phone call

Sorry, I sort of did chapter four twice, but I promise you'll like this one better!

Suddenly, the phone rang. I flopped over, got one of my rear tentacles caught under a radiator and fell on my face. From behind me, the guys laughed and amongst them, the girl. Her voice was strangely like Blacky's but lighter; a giggling bark of a laugh. I rolled my eyes and got back on my 'feet', laughing with the rest of them. I picked up the phone that Damon installed in the front of the bus and said "Hello?"

Heavy breathing. Then a man, with a heavy British accent, said "Hello? To whom am I speaking?" I rolled my eyes.

"Listen buddy, y'got the wrong number-"

" The girl is in my custody."

I shut up a moment. How did this Limey (no offense to any Brits reading this) know we had Ran? Was he watching us? If so, I'd be talking to my agent.

"Listen dude, this is a private restricted line and I don't know how you know-"

"Pardon me. My name is Caleb Buschemi, I got this number from a very good friend of mine named Dkylar. He's one of the other gods."

I paused.

"Who is it?" asked Freddy. I waved a hand at him and hissed.

"You have my attention now, Buschemi." From behind me, Ran cried "_Caleb_!"

I heard her scramble up and run up behind me, so I coiled a tentacle around what I thought felt like her waist and held her at bay.

"Keep her with you, but keep her safe. She can take care of herself, but that girl has the fighting spirit of a Scotsman and the temper of an Irish. She's only sixteen, and I'm sure if you ask her, she'll tell you the circumstances surrounding that, but I tell you _to keep her_ _safe. _Understand? I hear from my son Corey that you'll be flying out to the U.K. next month. I'll see you at the concert."

"How'll we know it's you?" I asked.

"Easy." He had a small smile in his voice and I got the feeling he wasn't very young.

"I'll be accompanied by a wild-haired lizard punk and I'm the orange one with brown hair. I have a long scar running down the side of my face."

_A scar, huh? Sounds like his name should be Slade or Captain Bluebeard_ I thought randomly, smiling to myself.

"Can I talk, can I talk?" asked Ran from behind me. She struggled against my tightening appendage and I let her go.

"Hey…Caleb, was it? Ran wants to talk to you." I said. I handed to phone to her and she said "Hi, Dad!" with a big grin on her face. She was breathtakingly beautiful and her white seal-like skin was seamless and seemed to glow with the light of the moon. In that moment, I believed her.

"Okay. I will….no. Why?"

"Hey, Guppie, y'think it's really her dad?" asked Freddy. I shook my head.

"He says he's orange and from the sound of his son, he's a lizard. Should be interesting, he says he'll see us at the show next month." It was September now and we were planning to fly out after Blacky's birthday party, of which he conveniently knew nothing.

"She's gorgeous." breathed Kou, goggling at her. Adrian elbowed his conjoined twin in the ribs (what ribs he has) and he snapped out of it. Their sixteen (together) tentacles twitched and thumped occasionally, like a content cat's. In the sunlight, their skin was like living flames and it was hard to look at them for too long, they were so brightly colored. I guessed that Ran would be the same way, with her glowing white skin.

"Okay. Love you….bye." She hung up, still smiling.

"He's not really my dad. He was the one who took me in when I was human and fed me monster food, thus mutating me. I love his family like the one I never had growing up." She explained. She had a peculiarly cryptic way of talking.

"So, Ran. You'll be traveling with us for the next month and a half, so let me set down some rules for you." said Freddy.

"First; if the sound crew needs help, they'll ask Blacky. If he needs help, and only then, will you be allowed to handle our equipment. Second; we'll be featuring a few roadies this tour, so stay out of their way, too. Third and this is very important; No doing anything someone under eighteen is allowed to do." He stated. Ran rolled her eyes.

"No drinking, smoking, fooling with the roadies, trying to get into you guy's beds or getting in the way, got it. Anything else?" she summed up.

"She's good." said Adrian, laughing. I chuckled and put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. She tensed and I felt bad for the memory it must have induced in her mind.

"I like you, kid. We're heading from here to South Dakota for now. Our jet's being repaired so we're driving. In the meantime, it's gonna be a very boring ride. Wanna swap stories, eat junk food and drink 'till we drop?" I invited. I love beer, but unfortunately, after two or three, I'm usually drunk off my ass. My brother Sunny can down a six pack and get a buzz.

"Guppie, she's just a kid." said Freddy warningly. I laughed.

"Freddy, you're the second biggest alcoholic I know, give the kid a break, let'er have some fun." I taunted. Ran rolled her eyes and pulled away from me.

"How 'bout we skip beer, give me a few sodas, swap stories and eat junk food 'till we puke? Sound better? I'm missing a few organs, including half my liver, so I wouldn't drink if I could." she rephrased it. Kou and Adrian narrowed their eyes in suspicion.

"Why're you missing a few organs?" asked Kou.

She turned to face us from the left side and showed us a long, dark white scar, running just from the top of her pelvic bone to the middle of her rib cage. It wasn't a very long scar, because she was short and there wasn't much room between her ribs and her hips, but she was curvy enough so that I felt myself get a little loose in front. I snapped myself out of those thoughts and focused again on the scar. It really disfigured her, but then, so did the half dozen or so smaller scars that I began to notice.

"I was born with the same birth defect you guys were. My brother and I were separated shortly before the fire and I was still really clumsy without him. I'm still dead clumsy." she said.

"Ah." said Kou.

"Oh. That makes sense." said Adrian.

"Don't you have to be same sex?" I asked curiously.

She shrugged. "That's what I've read on the subject but I guess not. I know what I was like and I guess that's proof enough." She said dismissively, as if she wanted to go onto a different topic.

"Good enough for me." agreed Kou.

The bus was stopped at a rather deserted intersection and the stoplights were busted, flashing their silent, uninterested lights over the darkening landscape and bathing the grass nearby in an eerie light. It was almost nine.

"You still hungry?" asked Freddy. Ran shook her head but I distinctly heard her stomach growl. Blacky did too, because he rolled his eyes and reached into the porta-cooler. He tossed her a monster lunchable and said "bullshit. Eat."

"Okay. Thanks." She shrugged, and she promptly tore open the cardboard and began fixing herself a cold deep dish pizza. We lived on that stuff when we were on the road.

"Caleb said that you were sixteen but if I asked that you'd 'tell me the situation regarding that'. What'd he mean?" I asked.

"At any given fertile age, the deity will stop aging in order to preserve their fertility until they are ready to have children. Call it nature's way of making it so that you won't get old and die before you get the chance." She explained.

"So you're sixteen FOREVER!" cried Freddy, looking quite alarmed.

"I guess so. At least until I have children. And the first time, it will be child_ren_. Fraternal twins are strongly hereditary in my family." She said.

"Why?" I asked.

She looked at me sort of odd, like I should know this already, and said "Because it takes more than one person to supervise all the water in both worlds. Actually, the human world and the monster world are the same thing on the same planet; they're just reversals of each other. The monster world is simply a reflection of the human world." She explained. It took a while for all she'd told us to sink in.

"There is a way I can begin aging again." She said suddenly.

"How?" asked Freddy. He still looked quite appalled that she'd be stuck sixteen forever.

"If I have children, they grow up and have children, and so on and so forth until the next eighth generation, the new deities are born and I can begin safely aging again. Even then I'll still live for a very long time. I'll share deity duties with the newborn deities until they are old enough to control it on their own, then I'll simply assist them when needed. I'll never lose the power of the sea." She told us, spreading tomato sauce on her crust.

Freddy sighed and shook his head.

"Kid, this is sumthin' else." He said, shaking his head again. He was right. But it was about to be something else entirely. Little did he know that within the next forty eight hours, she would save our lives.

FORESHADOWING!


	7. Iowa

Hey, enjoy the seventh chapter. snicker

The bus turned left out of Columbus, Ohio and headed down the back road to what would soon be South Dakota. It was at least an hour since Ran'd fallen asleep, exhausted. Asleep, she looked even more woebegone than before. Her breath caught in her chest, giving her intakes of air a slightly chunky sound, as if she was breathing in more than air.

"Her breathing don't sound too good." said Freddy. Kou shook his head in agreement. They were both curled up in one of the bed seats on the other side of the bus and Blacky was curled up on the floor like some terrifying travesty of a pet cat. He appeared to be dozing, but I knew he was awake, listening to what was being said around him.

"How long until we're in Dakota?" I asked.

"About two days. Why, bored already?" asked Blacky from where he lay with his eyes closed. His voice was very deep and growly, like the voice guy on the human station, 105.1. Despite his ferocious appearance and even more ferocious voice, he had the heart of a teddy bear.

"You believe her story?" Adrian asked his brother.

He shrugged. "Why not? Why would she lie? It coincides with what dad told us all along growing up."

"Man, I never believed those stories as a kid, Kou, you know that."

"Well, that's your problem."

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Shut up!" I hissed. If they didn't keep it down, they'd wake the kid up!

"Sorry." muttered Kou. He was, too.

We rode on in silence for a while, until Ran said something in her sleep.

"What'd she say?" I said. It sounded like 'Collie' but I wasn't sure.

"Corey." said Freddy.

"That's that Buschemi guy's son." I muttered.

"_Buschemi!"_ sputtered Freddy through a beer. He sprayed the floor with his mouthful and Blacky got blasted with it. He sat up very fast for such a big guy and shook his head like a dog, spraying us all.

"Oh, maaaann!" whined Adrian.

"Hey, what the f!" I cried. (Fill in the blank!)

"Corey…"Ran mumbled again, apparently unaware that we were all sprayed with beer.

"What the fk's up with you, man?" I cried, pulling a disgusted face and sopping the latter with the bottom of my shirt.

"_The billionaire's kid!"_ Freddy said disbelievingly.

"Billion—shit." said Adrian dully.

"What?" I asked, grabbing a rag out of the rag bag in the corner. I wiped up the floor with a tentacle and awaited his answer.  
"He dropped his shirt." said Kou. Adrian picked it up with a tentacle and flung it with a whip crack of said tentacle. The loud noise woke Ran up in a heart beat. She sprang up, eyes wide in fear, and immediately cowered into a fetal position.

"Huhh?" she cried.

"Hey, take it easy kid, it was just Adrian being stupid." soothed Freddy, covering her shoulders up with the blanket she'd flung on the floor earlier. It was September, after all.

"Adrian?" she asked. Oh, right. She didn't even know our names.

"Yeah, I'm over here." He said, waving at her almost lazily.

"Stupid, we haven't even told you our names." said Freddy, smiling like he would to Heather. Heather was his daughter, for whom he would do anything. She was only a toddler at the moment.

"I'm Freddy." said Freddy.

"Kou." He waved.

"I'm Guppie."

"Flounder." accused Freddy. I stuck my tongue out at him. Flounder was my real name but I insisted everybody call me Guppie, even my brothers and sister.

"Nickname?" she asked, no longer afraid, although her hands were still shaking.

"No, my real name. Guppie's my nickname." I corrected her. She smiled.

"Who's the wolf?" she asked, not unkindly. Blacky gave her a rare smile, stretched like a cat, and sat up on his hind legs, crossing his two middle and sitting otherwise like a dog. For a dog-like monster, he moved more like a large cat.

"I'm Xavyer. Just call me Blacky, everyone does." He grinned. Ran glanced at his sharper-than-thou fangs and smiled back.

"Cool fangs." She said. Blacky's grin got wider and plenty sharper, his canines sliding over his lower lip like they did when his mouth was closed. Every tooth he possessed was like a razor. His gums were pink spotted with black here and there and his lips were black, too.

"Thanks." He said.

"My fangs are more for puncturing than chewing, it's annoying. I wish they were more like yours." she said. Blacky actually laughed at this, throwing his head back on his neck and barking at the ceiling.

"What?" she said, unsure why he was laughing.

"Nothing, kid. I like you. Smile." he said, quieting down. Not that Damon could hear or cared what was going on back here anyway.

Ran opened her mouth as wide as it could go (which, for her size wasn't very wide at all) to reveal razor sharp sabers for teeth, like a snake's. They were pearly white and about an inch and a half or so long.

"No shit, she wasn't joking. Lookit her molars, though, sharp." I muttered thoughtfully. Her molars were molars, but with sharpened stakes of enamel for points. She lolled her pink tongue out and it reached past her chin!

"Whoa, I wouldn't go flashing that around kid, y'might give someone an idea." said Freddy. She closed her mouth and withdrew her tongue. Freddy was frowning and I could tell he was thinking of Missy and Sage, our two newest roadies and they were both tramps. Missy was after Blacky at the moment, and he was dutifully ignoring her, which made her furious. I thought it was funny.

"Hey Fred we're almost in Iowa!" called Damon from up front. Outside, storm clouds were gathering and I could see this made Ran happy. At least, she was pressed up against our tinted window.

"You can control the weather too, right?" asked Freddy hopefully.

"Yeah, but not this. This looks like…nah." She muttered.

"No, what?" I asked sharply. Thunder rolled overhead.

Suddenly, the bus was rocked over on two wheels, throwing all of us against Ran's window.

"Aaaahhhh!" I screamed.

Rain suddenly lashed at the window, right out of nowhere, and I knew Ran was hurt. I had believed the stories after all.

"Ran! Ran, are you okay!" Kou was screaming.

"Of COURSE I'm not okay, you doofus! Your suckers are hurting my neck!" she screamed angrily. The lights in the bus suddenly went out and Damon wasn't driving anymore. My stomach suddenly slipped up into my throat as the bus was lifted off it's wheels. Wait a minute. _Lifted off it's wheels?_

"HANG ON TO SOMETHING!" I screamed, grabbing onto one of the bolted down seats. There was a scramble as they all tried to hold on to something and I grabbed Ran around the waist and held onto another seat with every tentacle I possessed. The bus was

"What is this!" screamed Freddy, as we were thrown around and around.

"It's a tornado!" screamed Ran.

"Stop it!" yelled Freddy.

"I can't, wind isn't my element!" she screamed back. Blacky was still being bumped around and suddenly, he wasn't anywhere!

"Blacky!" I screamed. The doors were open!

Oh! Oh no, what'll happen next? You'll have to wait 'till next chapter to find out.


	8. Show cancelled and arrest

Hey, guys, now that school's started again, it may take a little longer for me to get these new chapters up, and I've had a lot of stress on me lately, so be patient! This chapter's a little long…but it's good!

"Should we follow her?" I asked stupidly. We'd just lived through a tornado! A frigging tornado! Nothing in my life had ever been so scary and I was all shaky from a combination of nerves and adrenaline. Out of the original seven people on the bus when we left Ohio, there were now two missing, alive or dead we didn't know yet. We had no choice but to follow Ran outside into the night. My mind made up, I headed for the front of the bus and used my four arms to pry the doors open. Ran may have thought she was strong, but she wasn't as strong as me. I made up for what I lacked in bone with muscle.

Outside, crickets were chirping their endless songs and the mosquitos were already out and biting. We were some miles from the main road, and by the looks of it, we were also in the middle of nowhere. If we could find Blacky, maybe he could fly up and have a look around.

"Ran?" I called.

"Over here. I found Blacky!" she called back, from somewhere over to my left. Behing me, Freddy carefully climbed down the steps of the bus and looked around. He whistled at all the debris littering the ground. Anything on the outside of the bus that had been sticking out or not nailed down had apparently been ripped off and thrown. But that might mean…

"Oh, jeez, I'm comin'!" I cried. I ran in the general direction of her voice and there, about twenty feet from our now wrecked bus, lay Blacky. From what I could see in the meager light, he wasn't breathing.

"Blacky!" I screamed.

I ran up until I was standing right behind Ran, but Blacky's fur was so dark that he blended in with the shadows like smoke. I couldn't see a damned thing.

"Hang on. I have to focus on withdrawing my subconscious. Then we'll have some light." She muttered.

"What's going on, where's Black-…oh, no." muttered Freddy. Freddy and Blacky were the two remaining members of the original band and they were best friends. The twins had apparently decided to stay on the bus because they did not follow us out.

Suddenly, I tensed. Something was happening to the air. I was suddenly scared, but why I didn't know. I just…sensed it. Ran was glowing with a bright white light, the outlines of her body shining from within just like a goddess out of a mythology textbook. She stood up and went over to kneel on Blacky's other side, and her glow illuminated a grisly scene.

"OH!" Freddy cried, eyes suddenly wide and mouth covered. I just stared.

Blacky was sprawled out across the ground, blood pooled in a dark puddle just under his lower arms. He was breathing, but very shallowly. It was anyone's guess as to how he was even alive at all, because sticking out of his stomach was the brand new exhaust pipe for the bus. His arms were also bent at odd angles and he was moaning.

"Oh, man. Can anyone lift him?" Ran asked.

"What?" I said dazedly. Our show would have to be cancelled, for sure.

"Fuing help me _lift_ him!" she said irritably.

"We can't, he's too heavy." said Freddy, finding his voice. Ran made an impatient noise in the back of her throat and threw up her hands. With the motion came a huge fountain of water that geysered up beneath the fallen bassist, bringing him at about waist level. Freddy and I jumped back in alarm.

The water lifted Blacky right up off the ground, so that his limbs lolled and his tongue rolled out of the side of his mouth. The pipe was firmly lodged in his stomach.

"I'll be right back, I gotta call the others." Said Freddy. He looked like he was going to be sick and I thought I knew the real reason that he was dashing away as if his life depended on it. He was gonna be sick. I didn't blame him. We saw our fair share of blood at our concerts but now it was concerning someone we knew and loved. This blood was different.

Ran reached into the geyser of water and grasped the top of the exhaust pipe. She pulled it out with an almighty squelching sound and the water ran red. Immediately Ran began the singsong chant again and she threw the pipe away. She moved her arms like she was touching him but I couldn't quite see through the water. Apparently, she could.

The water ran pink for a few seconds, then clear again.

"Get me a towel, something he can lay on." She barked. Gone was the tentative uncertainty in her voice. This wasn't a question, it was a _command. _I moved to obey, but Freddy had beaten me to it. He came trotting up on all fours with a huge blanket in his mouth and I took it from him and got prepared to set it underneath him. She began lowering her arms very gently and the water level came down. With it came Blacky. I spread the blanket down and he fell very gently onto it. No blood seeped out from under him now. She had done the milky white clear thing like she had with Blacky.

"I called Mike, Mitch and Todd but nobody's answering. They're out of range." said Freddy.

"Did you call an ambulance?" I asked. He shook his head.

"I called our agent and he said if we can make the bus crawl to Des Moines that he'll meet us there with an ambulance and everything.

"What about crowd control?" asked Ran.

"Covered. What did you DO!" cried Freddy, eyeing the fallen bloody pipe and the fresh blood gurgling up out of Blacky's stomach in fresh rivulets. The fur around the area was matted and his whole backside was soaked from the water.

"I'm helping him." she said.

"HELPING HIM? HE NEEDS A FRIGGIN' DOCTOR, NOT SOME KID!" he screamed. I flinched. His voice cut through the night like an air horn. The crickets abruptly stopped chirping.

"_If _you_ want to figure out a way to drag him onto the bus with a fuing _PIPE_ stickin' out of him just so he can die on the bus, then be my guest, but since _you_ guys picked me up I've considered you friends and I do _anything_ to help my friends. If you don't trust me to know what I'm doing, then I can take that seal on your body _right_ the fu back off_ _and you can die of blood loss just. Like. _HIM_!"_ she shrieked. Her whole body was shaking with what I took to be adrenaline and shock, but a look at her face and the furious expression told me that it was anger. During her angry diatribe, Freddy had stood back up and was glaring at her through a face on the verge of tears of grief for his best friend. Since he said nothing in return, Ran once again kneeled by Blacky's side and flattened the fur around the wound so she could begin to close it. She laid her palms flat against the bloody hole and milky colored water seeped out from beneath her hands. Blacky arched his back and roared in pain, once again shutting up the crickets.

"What's she _doing_ to him, tell'er to _stop_ it—_Let me _GO!" he screamed as I wrapped my arms around him to stop him from leaping at Ran. Ran began a different singsong chant this time, one that was almost like a lullaby, soft and sweet. I wasn't any language that I'd ever heard but it was beautiful anyway. Blacky groaned and while Freddy and I struggled, unheeded by Ran, Blacky slowly sat up. He tried his arms, but they were broken. Three of them, his two winged arms and one of his lower arms, were bent at wrong angles. Ran continued to sing her lullaby and Blacky patiently watched what she was doing. He whined the way dogs do and without warning, she gently lowered her head to the edge of the wound and bit him!

"HEY! Get off him!" screamed Freddy. He was fighting furiously now and I aided myself with the help of a few more tentacles to hold him at bay.

"Let her be, Fred, she knows what she's doing, if she didn't then we'd all be dead by now! He's fine! If she wanted to hurt us she'd have done it any time! DON'T-GIVE-HER-A REASON!" I yelled over his voice.

Ran withdrew her head and her eyes were glowing a beautifully clear shade of deep blue, her fangs were dripping some sort of clear liquid. There was no blood. His stomach stopped bleeding freely and without ado, she began her sweet song again. The clear milk white thing now covered both sides of Blacky's wound. He apparently felt no more pain.

"Why can't I feel my arms? Look at my arms…" moaned Blacky. His voice was needled with a pain in his gut that seemed not to be there anymore.

Ran stood up, her expression unreadable, and gently bit his lowest broken appendage. He hissed in pain and I said "Can you at_ least_ give us an explanation of what you're doing so he'll stop fighting?" Ran withdrew her fangs, again dripping with a clear fluid and wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. She was still shining like the moon.

"I recently had a physical and while examining my mouth the human doctor told me he needed me to bite down on something. I did and this clear fluid squirted from my canines. He sent a sample of it to a hospital and the hospital sent him an email and the sample saying it was a form of morphine, which was impossible, according the the email." She explained.

"Why's that?" I asked. Freddy stopped fighting so much.

"The email said that no living creature should be able to produce any form of morphine or painkillers. But that's exactly what's in my fangs."

"A narcotic? Jeez, we better hope the gangs never get a hold of you." I muttered.

"That's what's weird. The hospital said it wasn't morphine, exactly, but it was a relative and without the narcotic effects. It just numbs pain as far as they could tell." She finished. Blacky was moaning again and I rolled my eyes. Okay, was this kid normal in _any_ way?

"Can I finish the job please?" she asked, not mean.

Freddy relaxed like a dead body and swallowed hard. I could tell it was way against what was _really_ trailing through his mind, but he nodded mutely. Blacky said "Wait!" and she faltered.

"What happened?" he asked.

"You fell out of the bus while we were caught in the tornado." I said. This much, at least, I knew to be true. Blacky groaned and shook his head. His long, slightly wavy black hair hit him in the face and he shook his head to move it, but it didn't move. He tried moving his arm to tuck it behind his ear and screamed in pain as the broken bones grinded against each other. Ran got a concerned look on her face, reached up and tenderly touched his face. He winced but when a full minute passed and she didn't seem to hurt him, he nudged her hand over his muzzle and allowed her to move his hair aside for him.

"Wow. That's a first." Said Freddy, staring. I knew what he meant. Blacky usually never even went to whatever whorehouse happened to be nearby at the time, let alone allow someone he barely knew to touch his face. He was kind of touchy about his personal space and he didn't take to people too easily. He whined and winced only a little as she gently tugged on the arm she'd bitten and set the bones. Blacky watched on with relatively calm liquid blue eyes riddled with only the slightest hint of pain

"This is not normal." Freddy said. I nodded, watching interestedly. Sher bit his other two arms, re-set them, too, and told him not to move his arms.

"There's a sheet in the storage compartment on the bus we could tear into homemade slings." I suggested. Ran nodded. Her nose was bleeding again and she winced and put a hand to her head.

"What's wrong with her?" Freddy asked me.

"You got me. Maybe she's doing more than just numbing his pain." I whispered back as I walked away.

"What are you talking about?" he hissed. I stopped just outside the bus with a hand on the edge of the doors and turned back to him, staring calmly into his Halloween orange eyes.

"Think about it Fred. She said she controls everything '"from the lowliest mud puddle to the water contained in our bodies."' What are our entire brains surrounded by?" I asked. Freddy's eyes widened and he stormed back onto the bus ahead of me.

"Ugh…Freddy!" I cried. From inside, I heard the twin's outraged cries as Freddy dialed our agent again. He sounded furious. I wondered if my big mouth had gotten poor Ran into a load of trouble. I jumped onto the bus after Freddy and saw that the twins'd gotten the power back on in the bus. The overhead lights were on again and they'd done a little tidying up. The windows were still blown out and there was still blood and glass everywhere but the bus looked otherwise alright. Freddy was shouting orders into the phone and he hung up, growling.

I marched back out the doors, shaking my head and gritting my teeth, kicking myself for even suggesting to Freddy that she may be able to control various parts of our brains with water. It _was_ possible. I kicked open the storage compartment and yanked out a few dirty sheets and a first aid kit we kept in there. I popped the box open and pulled out the little pair of scissors those things always come with and headed back out to the shining white beacon that was the Sea Goddess.

"Got them? Good, I'm not sure what shape to cut them in-"

"-Good, I do." I cut her off shortly. I began impatiently cutting the two sheets into four squares and began spiraling them and slinging them around Blacky's neck to gently cradle one broken arm/wing. Ran began helping me and pretty soon all three broken arms were slung. He gently stood up and towered above the rest of us as usual.

"Incredible. If she weren't here to do this, he'd be bleeding to death on the ground with a pipe through his stomach…" I muttered to myself. I followed Blacky back to the bus but then I noticed the almost regular source of light was faltering and dying. I turned back and saw that Ran was following us at a snail's pace, her trail dragging on the ground and her head hung. Her hair obscured her face but I was pretty sure she was either crying from the pain in her head or just wincing with it. I doubled back and put an arm around her shoulder. She looked up at me and her eyes were watering up, but she was biting back the tears. She was so beautiful.

"C'mon. I'll carry you back to the bus." I offered.

"I'm fine." She mumbled. She took another step and stumbled over her own tail and I rolled my eyes and picked her up around the waist and slung her over my shoulder. Not the best way to carry a goddess, but it would do for now. I set her down on one of the seats, but she suddenly jerked and sat up straight.

"Damon!" she cried. She ran back out of the bus again and I sighed and hung my head.

"What a hot head. She's so stubborn…" I growled.

"Oh, no, she's not biting Damon." growled Freddy. He began storming out the door but I held him back. I wasn't the only one, though. The twins and Blacky also moved to block him, Blacky with just one arm and a furry, muscular thigh.

Freddy looked as if he was about to say something, opened his mouth, then shut it again. He 'hmmphed' and sat down heavily, arms crossed and glaring.

"Fine." he gave in. The rest of us sat down and waited as well, but I was a little uneasy. If she could control our brains, which I didn't doubt, then she was probably just doing it to calm us down so she could help us, but the idea, still…my conscience was nagging at me. _Damn morality_ I thought to myself.

We sat in silence for about twenty minutes when Ran came back in, Dam in her arms. She was stronger than I'd at first thought. She set him down and suddenly collapsed on the floor, breathing heavily. I jumped up and helped her up into the seat opposite Damon. Damon himself was awake and fully alert and he took Ran from me and put a hand to the side of her face. His touch was loving, almost gentle, and he grabbed a blanket out of the corner and covered her up with it.

"Damon!" cried Freddy. Damon, of course, couldn't hear him.

He touched his brother and Damon started and looked around at him.

"You okay, man?" he asked. Damon smiled shakily and nodded. He showed us a small shallow cut on the side of his head that had a thin film of milk white stuff covering it.

Freddy got up and hugged his brother and Damon pulled away.

"I gotta get this tub moving again." He said, turning back to the driver's seat. He turned the key in the ignition and, miraculously, it started up!

"Woohoo, we are back in business!" cheered Damon. His happiness was not readily shared. Ran was apparently unconscious again. A small trickle of blood ran out of her nose and I took up the beer rag from earlier and wiped it for her, being careful not to touch the stuff. Who knew what it did?

The bus lurched as we began moving again and I sighed and rubbed my eyes.

"You guys okay?" I asked the twins and Blacky.

"Yeah, I feel like I could do a concert." said Kou. Adrian growled at him and said "Oh no you won't." Freddy was red-eyed and the whites were bloodshot with tears for his brother.

"You should be thanking her, Fred, not siccing the cops on her the minute we get to Des Moines." snapped Adrian.

"She deserves a thank you, not a jail cell." added Kou.

Blacky and I were silent.

"I was scared, okay? I saw Blacky lying in the dust and I thought 'oh shit, there goes my best friend'. Then I saw her bite him and I imagined her tearing through Damon's jugular with those fangs, and…dammit, she's not a nurse, Guppie!" he yelled.

"Yeah, she's just a kid, but it doesn't change the fact that if it wasn't for her, half of us would be dead, Freddy, so lay off and call the agent back, tell him to call off the cops." I demanded. He stared at me a moment, then shook his head wearily.

"I don't know, Gup, goddesses don't exist." I growled and slapped his face with a tentacle. He stared at me, eyes wide in shock.

I stood up and glared down at him. What was his problem?

"Oh yeah? Where did the inspiration for that song come from? Why were you so adamant about recording it?" I demanded. For this he had no answer. I took that as an 'I'm sorry', and sat back down. Ran stirred and sat up, pushing the blanket off of her. She realized we were moving and pulled her hair back out of her face. She was covered in blood that was not hers. Her face was streaked with it from her hair, making her look like a killer. Which, I reminded myself, Freddy probably thought she was.

Up ahead, the city of Des Moines, Iowa loomed over the horizon. There were ambulance lights and I heard sirens. The bus stopped and the doors, of course, were stuck open. Immediately, two paramedics barged in and ushered us out of the bus one by one.

"Are you hurt?" one asked me. I shook my head.

"What about the girl?" he asked.

"What she needs is sleep, and a decent meal." I said. He nodded and began pushing her out the door. Still glowing, she allowed it. Blacky followed them out and now I was the only one left on the bus. I got off in time to see two cops slapping handcuffs around Ran's wasted wrists. She was crying now, and loudly. I shoved my way through the crowd and yelled at them.

"HEY! She didn't do anything but help! You can't lock her up for that!"

"Excuse me, sir, but you need to calm down or we'll be forced to send you to the hospital with the others." said one of the paramedics. I let it go and decided to give Freddy a good kick in the ass for this the next time I saw him. She didn't deserve this!

I watched the cops push a struggling Ran into a police cruiser and drive off, then watched as a heavyweight ambulance carried off Blacky and three regular ones carted off the rest of my band. I was left alone with an empty broken tour bus and a few curious onlookers.

"_What the fk are you lookin' at! Go on, go home!"_ I screamed at them. They obeyed, a little scared. I hung my head and headed towards the nearest hotel to check myself in and wait to visit the guys at the hospital tomorrow. Meanwhile, the busy city of Des Moines, Iowa continued on around and without me.

"She deserves better than that. Damn you Freddy."

I walked off towards the nearest Mobile 6 to check myself in.

Really long, but what's gonna happen to Ran?


	9. One phone call

Hey, for those of you who are reading this for the first time and noticed that my chapter four happens sort of twice, sorry, I can't replace it. There are things about Ran in that chapter that I don't feel like retyping, so disregard anything other than dialogue in the repeat chapter. 'Kay?

"Hi, I'd like a room for a night for one." I told the receptionist. She sat behind her desk, probably not a care in the world except what she was gonna feed her snot nosed brat when the night shift was over. She typed something into her computer console and smiled at me.

"Pay in advance or after?" she asked, winking at me and blushing. I repressed a weary groan and rolled my eyes. I pulled my wallet out of my vest pocket and threw some credit card or other at her. She did her thing, swiped it, the whole nine yards and gave it back to me. She handed me a card key with the monster logo on it (a big blue M with an eyeball and a fang on it) and a spare in case I misplaced the first one. The receptionist smiled again at me and I promptly turned my back on her, not sorry to be rid of her. If there was ever a rock star to be sick of his fame, it was me. I was by no means suicidal, nor did I want to die, but I hated to be loved for _what_ I was instead of who I was. I knew what I wanted in life, and it was minor drugs for my depression and my friends.

Right now, I wanted my friends.

I looked at the card. It said suite A2. I walked down the first hall I came to, and by some ironic stroke of luck, with everything else that'd happened that night, I came to A1. I skipped over to A2 and swiped the card key. The door opened and I stepped inside and closed the door behind me without even bothering to turn on the light. I crossed over to the bathroom and turned the cold water on full blast. I ducked my head in and shook my head to get the chlorine mucous off my face. I shut the water on and placed my hands on either edge of the porcelain sink, staring at the drain and thinking. Why didn't Freddy call the cops off? Ran hadn't done anything but help us and the only way he could think of to express himself was to sic the cops on her? It made no sense. Unless he was afraid of her…but that was laughable. She was a teenage girl, an abused one no less. But sometimes victims of abuse rose up and struck back…no, her uncles were human, and like she said: it was us she was supposed to protect and harvest, monsters and humans alike. So there was no reason Fred should be afraid of her. I shook my head and went back into the main bedroom. I threw the covers off the bed and flung myself down. It was 12:25. I was exhausted. I turned over on my side and closed my eyes, thoughts of turmoil, the band and a shining white light turning in my head.

Light shone on my face and in return, I threw a pillow over my eyes and ignored it, wanting every last second of sleep that I could get. But since sunlight is so damned persistent, especially when one doesn't want to wake up, I was forced to roll out of bed and remember where I was. I was in Des Moines, Iowa at a Mobile 6, waiting for the moment I would be able to see my friends and family, my band, in the hospital and we could get Ran and get the hell out of this state.

I got up and stumbled into the bathroom. I turned on an ice cold shower, shook my jean vest off and hopped in. The cold water woke me up and I gulped some down and felt it pass through my gills, cleaning out the mucous gunk that gathers there naturally to protect them from the dirt in the air. For all the good it does, with all the crap in the air these days. I shut the shower off and jumped out, toweling myself off lightly. I pulled my vest back on and grabbed the card keys, not bothering to make the bed again. Let the maids take care of it, see who flirted with me next time. When that happened, I _liked_ being remembered as the depressed jerk who never accomplished anything. On my way out, the receptionist flashed me a suggestive smile and in return I flashed her a suggestive finger. Without waiting for her to make a face, I stepped out into the middle of the parking lot. With some surprise, I saw that the tour bus had been driven into the parking lot of the hotel. I hopped on board and was surprised at the mess there. The blood wasn't yet completely dried and there was a faint coppery salty odor. The salt smell was stronger.

"I guess the guys should lay off the salt." I mused to myself, turning the key in the ignition and hoping it would start. The engine turned and started and I backed out of the lot and drove into the street. I still didn't know what hospital they'd been taken to.

"The police station…" I muttered. To distract myself, I turned the radio on and cranked it, a heavy metal song Damon'd been listening to on CD last night. The city streets gleamed too bright after last night and it hurt my eyes. I turned onto Wright Street and saw a police car up ahead, pulled over. The guy had his shirt unbuttoned and appeared to be mowing down on an Italian sub. Ranch dressing flecked his mustache. Just my luck, to run right into a cop when I was looking for a police station. I pulled over, slid the window over and stuck my head out.

"Hey, 'xscuse me!" I called. The cop started and looked up at me, a piece of bacon dangling out of his cat-like mouth. He looked ready to shoot me for disturbing his lunch. I refrained from making a disgusted face, remembering all too well the one occasion I had been stopped for drunk driving, the result of which was only half my fault.

"Yeah, whaddaya want, pal, I'm on my break!" said the guy, tearing a huge chunk out of his meat sub. _Gross,_ I thought. I'm a carnivore, but just the way the sub was made looked wrong. Fleshy strips of bacon hanging out, cooked turkey, beef, lettuce and what looked like pale green chunks of dragon steak just oozing blood out of the damned thing. I hadn't eaten anything since last night's show and my stomach was still turning at the sight of it.

"There was an incident last night, some members of a band were taken to a hospital, I'm their drummer. D'you know which hospital they were taken to?" I called out. I turned down the stereo so I could hear the guy and he set down his nauseating sandwich and stepped out of his cruiser. He walked up to the bus window and craned his neck up to look at me. I knew I looked like a mess, my dreadlocks all messy and tired lines under my eyes. My tongue ring felt very slimy in my mouth because I hadn't been able to brush my teeth yet.

"Yeah, I wasn't part of that raid, but my pal Benton was. I'll ask him." said Mr. Disgusting Sandwich. He left to use the radio in his cruiser and I thumped my head on the back of my seat and stared at the ceiling.

"'My pal Benton'. Right. Well, if this guy 'Benton' can tell me where to find my band, I won't tell his ass to 'get bent'." I muttered under my breath.

"Hey, guy!"

I stuck my head out the window again.

"He says your friends are at Iowa General, it's about three miles down this road, then take your first left, the hospital should be right there." he said. I gave him a mock salute and attempted my first half assed smile of the day. He smiled back but I could tell all he really wanted to do was go back to eating his gross sandwich. I rolled my eyes and turned the radio back up, driving in the direction he'd told me. I stopped at a light up ahead and readjusted the rearview mirror while I waited. I was taller than Damon and it was a wonder that such a mediocre thing as the _rearview mirror_ was even still in place after the tornado. Some girls in the car next to me shouted at me and waved, making kissy faces and I turned the radio up louder and ignored them, gritting my teeth and resisting the urge to scream at them. The light turned green and I took the opportunity to gun it and speed past them. Heavy metal music blared in my ears and I began singing along, not well, because it was early for me, but with gusto. I saw the hospital looming up ahead, a big tan building, ugly and very hospital-looking. I pulled into the parking lot and figured screw it. If anyone had wanted to steal anything from the famous tour bus, they probably already did it last night while I was sleeping. I parked it and didn't bother locking it. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, seeing as both doors were shattered, thanks to Ran's foot. I wondered what she was doing right now.

"I_ told_ you, I didn't do shit!" I screamed for the hundredth time, banging my fist down on the table separating me from the ugly cop across from me. He had a mob of spiky black hair and very red-looking skin. His eyes were all bloodshot and he smelled like pot. It was making me sick. I folded my wings behind me and stared the wasted cop in the eye, making him calm down. His eyes went out of focus and he pressed a button that would open the door.

"Leave." he said. I more than happily obliged. Outside the dingy room, prison cells lined the walls where all stated of monsters either languished or simply sat bored behind bars. Upon seeing me, another cop took me by the hand, which was very heavily bandaged now, and unlocked the cell door they'd thrown me in the first time. The reason the cop's hand was bandaged was because he'd made the mistake of trying to grab me by the elbow yesterday. He didn't know I had sharp fins on my hips and elbows that are a defense mechanism as sharp and as dangerous as a switchblade.

"Hey, lady. The pig done questioning you?" asked the only other cell occupant, a young, good-looking lizard monster like Freddy with orange eyes and blue skin. He had long red hair that was done in very sloppy dreads. Light gold streaks had been bleached in single strands on either side of his face.

I turned and stared at the guy. From his jumper, his name was simply 0068664352. His real name was Anthony and so far he was the only friend I had in this place. I neither knew nor cared why he was in, but I'd heard rumors of a vampiric blood cult and at least twelve lives. He sat on the edge of the cot, which, ironically enough, was the same exact model and size of my bed back home. I went and sat next to him and he whistled softly. I glared at him from under my hair and he backed off. He really did look so much like Freddy, and I hated him for it, despite his good looks. He caught me staring at him.

"What?"

"Nothing. You look like someone I know, that's all." I said.

He snorted."Probably.I got sixteen siblings. You know his name?" he asked.

"Freddy."

Anthony laughed.

"Freddy, goddammit! Yeah, Freddy's my little brother! Damn! How is the runt?" he laughed.

Suddenly, someone banged on the bars.

"Hey! Your name Ranekaera?" asked the prison guard. I glared at him.

"Yes."

"You got a phone call. Says his name's Guppie." said the guard. I smiled. Finally!

He unlocked the door and handed me a cordless and I took it and said "Hello?"

"Ran! How are you?" said Guppie.

"Fine. How's Freddy?" I asked bitterly. At his brother's name, Anthony smiled broadly, revealing bloodstained fangs. He must have been biting and drawing blood from himself, I thought grimly.

"Come on, Ran, he said he's sorry, we're at the hospital right now."

"And?"

"The staff here is baffled. They haven't had to do a thing to help them at all. Seems you covered it all, kid. Congratulations." said Guppie.

"I know. The cops here are assholes, half of them smoke pot and the other half couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight, I need to get outta here." I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. I _wanted_ the other inmates and the prison guard to hear this. Some of the guys laughed and one of them actually went so far as to cheer me on.

"Heh heh, no shit. Listen, bail on you is 100 dollars, I'm gonna be over in a minute to bail you outta there, okay kid? I called our agent and we're clearing your name even as we speak. How you doing?" he asked.

"Oh great. I haven't been raped yet." I said, only half joking.

"That's not funny. I'll be right over okay? Hang tight."

"Yeah. See you. Hey, Guppie, tell Freddy I met his brother."

"I will. Bye,"

"Bye."

I hung up the phone and flashed Anthony a thumbs up.

"You getting out?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Cool. I still got two years left to serve. They might let me out on parole, though." he said hopefully.

"Great." I said, smiling back. I mentally made a note to myself that if I ever heard Anthony was let out, I'd personally find him myself and give him the biggest hug of his life just for existing. I never forget a friend.


	10. I'm sorry

Chapter nine's up, and Ran gets out and…wait why the am I telling you? Read for yourself and find out! Also, for anyone who wants to see what the band looks like, I drew them myself!

Hey, kid, y'got any weed?" hissed another inmate. He had a face like a human, that somehow resembled a rat, and he had bat wings, black talon claws and a stance like a humans. He also looked very pinched and unhealthy.

"No, sorry." I said, with a slight trace of sarcasm in it. I dropped my wings limply behind my back, so they resembled a cape, and Anthony told the guy off.

"Leave the kid alone, huh? She just got here." He snapped, baring his fangs.

"Thanks." I said.

"No problem, Chunky, there, he's a convicted sex offender, likes little kids. No one here likes him much." Explained Anthony.

"Lovely." I said. I found it funny that a guy as sickeningly skinny as him was nicknamed 'chunky'.

"Hey, kid. Y'got a visitor." Said the bandaged cop, banging the bars. Following him was Freddy, wearing a leather jacket, undoubtedly from one of the guys on the sound crew.

"Freddy!" said Anthony and me at the same time.

Freddy looked mildly surprised at seeing his brother there.

"They moved you, huh?" asked Freddy.

"Yeah, the one in New York got so crowded 'n' all. You here for the pet?" asked Anthony, nudging me gently.

"Yeah, Guppie-"

"-Screw Guppie. Why'd you do that, huh?" Anthony suddenly cut him off.

"She told you everything, didn't she?" asked Freddy mournfully. I guessed the others had already given him a thorough tongue thrashing already.

I said nothing. I preferred to run the guilt home by remaining silent and giving them sad looks. It seemed to be working so far. Freddy looked as if christmas had been canceled.

"Damn right. From the sounds of it, you'd be dead if she hadn't been there." Snarled Anthony. It struck me then just how much they looked alike. They must've been twins, had to be. Aside from the two-inch height difference, the different hair color and the radically different blue skin shade, they were identical.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay! The others have already threatened to quit the band if I didn't come bail you out." He suddenly cried.

"That's not an apology. That's desperation." I said coldly. I walked up to the bars, closed my eyes and my body passed through the bars like…well, water. Freddy stepped back and surveyed me carefully. Finally, he gave me a bone-crushing hug, which completely took me by surprise. Eyes wide, body tense, I allowed him to for a few seconds, and then gently pushed him away.

"I really am sorry, Ran. I was scared, y'know?" he said. I could tell from the look on his face that he was, too. His Halloween orange eyes were a soft pastel and he had an open, innocent look, one that made me think _wow. He really is good looking_.

"Fine. Now can we leave?" I asked.

"Let's. Seeya, Ant." Said Freddy, waving.

"Don't call me Ant! My name's Anthony!" he shouted. Freddy chuckled and I turned back.

"Thanks Anthony. For being there." I said so Freddy wouldn't hear.

"No problem. I'm a nice guy." He said.

I reached through the bars and gave him a hug, my arms and chest dissolving into water to embrace him. He hugged me back and I let him go.

"Bye." I said.

"Seeya."

"You coming?" asked Freddy.

"Just saying bye." I said.

"You guys twins?"

"Yeah, fraternal. I'm just the short one." He grumbled.

"Oh, cheer up, you're not that short. You're tall enough to drive, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, by four inches.""Shut up." I said, not wanting to argue. He didn't say anything. Apparently, he thought I had a valid point.

Outside, the guys waited in the tour bus. The door had been removed and replaced by a solid slab of corrugated cardboard and it made the bus look kind of derelict. Guppie waved through the window and Blacky even stuck his head out to smile at me. For the first time since the Buschemis, I felt wanted. Happy. I'll hand it back to Guppie now.

I grinned at the girl. I was glad she had survived her first encounter with jail. What she had said on the phone really hadn't been funny and for a minute I had actually worried. But seeing her now, smiling, I was relieved. She looked happy. Freddy ushered her up to the door and I shoved the cardboard away for a minute. Damon was at the wheel as usual and we all had clean medical bills-none. The hospital hadn't been able to do a thing. They had, though, dubbed Ran's milky white stuff as "bio-scab". The rest of the guys said it didn't even feel like they were hurt, although Blacky had complained at having his fur shaved off. Beneath, the skin you could see was a dark, gravelly gray, like the markings on his face.

I watched the kid walk up to the bus with Freddy and my face broke into a grin as sharp toothed as a saber fishes. Damon got up and moved the cardboard aside so they could pass through and Damon gave Ran a smile as well. We all had clean medical bills-that was, none. The hospital hadn't been able to do a thing for us, but they _had _dubbed Ran's milky white stuff as "bio-scab". The guys all said they didn't feel a thing, but Blacky had complained at having his fur shaved off. The skin beneath was a dark gravelly gray, like the markings on his face. I moved away from the window and wrapped her in a big, multi-tentacled hug. She hugged me back.

"Euugh, you're all cold and slimy." She grimaced, laughing as she said it.

"Euugh, you're all warm and bony." I whined back, grinning at her.

"Hey, Ran." Said Blacky. Ran turned at his voice and he pulled her into a hug that could have been mistaken for a headlock. She hugged him back fiercely, tangling her fingers in all the fur, but surprisingly, he didn't protest. She let him go and he was smiling at her too.

"You saved my life, Ran. You really did." He said. The atmosphere in the bus was suddenly tense. Ran looked a bit uncomfortable.

"It was nothing." She said.

"No, it damn well wasn't. I liked you from the start, but I never forget a favor. You ever need anything, tell me. Got it? And no being modest, either." He said a little more sternly.

" 'Kay."

"Hey, Ran. We called out folks and told them what happened. You shoulda heard our mother, she actually screamed." Chuckled Adrian. Kou rolled his eyes and said "It's _not _funny, Aid, we coulda died."

"No shit. So thanks." Finished Adrain.

"No problem." She said. She was blushing furiously now, trying not to look too happy. It wasn't working.

Suddenly a cell phone rang.

"Speaking of which, that's probably her now. She'll be wanting to talk to you." Said Kou brightly. Ran looked a little nervous all of a sudden.

"Hey, mom. Yeah, she's here. You wanna talk? Here she is." Kou handed her the cell, which was orange and had a pattern of skulls and surfboards all over it, his two favorite things.

While Ran talked, I pulled Freddy aside.

"So? What are you gonna do to make it up to her?" I demanded.

"I dunno, I thought I could take her out to dinner or sumthin'." He said thoughtfully.

"Freddy, she doesn't really seem to be the type." I said.

"We could let her record a song with us. We have a single that's overdue, we could invite her in as a guest singer." He said suddenly, as if he had reminded himself to suggest just the very thing all along.

"Yeah, but can she sing?" I asked. He shrugged, which was unlike him; his biggest pet peeve is when someone starts singing and they just can't.

"No clue. We can play a song on the radio and find out easily enough." He said fairly. Ran gave the phone back to Kou and Kou said "Hey. Okay. See you then." And hung up.

"Who was that?" I asked, crossing all four arms and a set of tentacles.

"My dad. He says he'll see us at the show and to look for him. So we'll be looking for that Caleb guy, his kid and our parents." Added Adrian.

"I forgot Caleb was gonna be there! Can I get in too?" asked Ran, as if her very existence depended on it.

"Sure Ran. No problem. In fact, you can even invite Caleb and his son backstage with us afterwards, after those two rookie bands leave." I said, smiling and throwing the bloody rag we'd used to clean the floor up aside. She grinned and suddenly threw her arms around me!

"Woa." I said, staggering under her weight. I hugged her back, with all four arms, and felt the skin beneath my right hand give way, as if there were something missing that should have been there.

"What's wrong with your side?" I asked.

"Oh, that. When they separated my brother and I, my liver was on the wrong side. It's okay. It's just where my liver should be." She said.

"Weird." I muttered, so she wouldn't hear me.

"What say we get to the Civic Center and do that show? We're running a little late as it is." Said Freddy suddenly.

Damon started our much abused bus with a roar and we were off!


	11. Meetings and the show

This chapter is gonna be a little lengthy. Caleb and Corey are my creations, as are the rest of the Destroyers and Ranekaera, and anyone who has any questions about them or wants to borrow them, they can email me anytime they want.Freddy sounds a bit like a mix of Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, Brent Smith of Shinedown and the lead singer of P.O.D. (But mostly just the first two). -Xave

All lyrics are mine, so no stealing.

The bus was cold with the doors only half boarded up and most of the windows all shattered. I shivered and wrapped as many tentacles as I could spare around my body in an attempt to make myself a little warmer. Ran was shivering violently. Freddy was hiding under all the blankets we had just to keep from getting hypothermia, since he's the only one of us besides his brother that's truly reptilian. Blacky, on the other hand, was simply lounging back at his ease, his bangs hanging in his face with a casual elegance that neither Freddy nor Adrian could compete with. The bus stopped at an intersection and Blacky noticed Ran as she gave a particularly violent shudder.

"You cold?" he asked, sitting up straighter and flipping his hair out of his eyes. His black hair hung down to his first 'waist', below his first arms but above his second.

"Very." She shivered, wrapping her shredded looking wings around herself. Blacky got up, which made the bus sort of swerve, and re-planted himself next to her on the seat. He gently held two side arms out and she looked at him uncertainly.

"C'mon, I don't bite." He said, smiling.

Ran very carefully leaned into his side, at first cautious, then, as she felt the fur, she practically suctioned herself to his side. He wrapped a wing membrane around her and Freddy merely rolled his eyes and looked the other way. The Civic Center loomed up ahead.

"Stop's coming up!" Damon called, pulling the enormous bus into the lot. I wanted to get inside, the twins were gearing themselves up for the show and Freddy looked as if the first person to try to get him out of those blankets would have both kneecaps broken. Ran and Blacky, nearly inseparable, merely sat there; Ran with her hands and face buried in his side, and he, with a cloudy expression on his face, as if he wasn't sure how to feel.

Outside, it was getting dark already, and people by the thousands were already waiting in line up front. They looked over at the bus as we drove in and I dreaded the worst.

"Look, it's them!"

"D'you think they'd sign my ticket in lipstick?'

"Oh my god, I love Freddy!"

"Listen to them. You'd think we were god or something." mused Freddy. I rolled my eyes.

"Only one person on this bus is a god." said Kou. Ran resurfaced and smiled at him, and he blushed and smiled back.

Damon parked around back and we began climbing out of the beat up vehicle. This was going to cost us big, I thought disgustedly, taking in the things that were going to need to be replaced. The doors, the windows, the floors because of all the blood, the pipe on the underside of the vehicle, the one that Ran'd wrenched out of our bassist's middle.

I hopped out and saw a few security guards milling about, but none moved to help us.

Ran got out behind me, shivered and looked around.

"I wonder if Caleb's here yet." She muttered.

"He will be. Just look for him and I'll keep and eye out for the crowd." I said, squinting in the direction of the parking lot. Only a few people were hanging out around the corner of the building, and Ran suddenly let out a little shriek.

"_Caleb!"_ she called, smiling. The other guys got out and smiled at her as she ran in the direction of the side o the building. There was one orange lizard monster and with him, a slightly smaller dark purple one. They both had snake-like bodies, six long limbs, and perfectly smooth skin (with the exception of wrinkles.) I noticed they didn't sprawl like true lizards.

_Hm. They must be Therapsids_, I thought. The purple one had long, wavy black hair, light brown eyes and a ring through his lip. They both wore black T-shirts, Caleb's with the Destroyers logo, his son's with a picture of us in front of our recording studio in Maine.

"_Ran!"_ the purple one cried. They ran to each other and she and Corey hugged, he embracing her very tightly. Then she hugged Caleb the billionaire, and he kissed her on both cheeks. Behind him was someone I hadn't noticed at first, a surly looking monster with four arms and a muscular torso that had all the looks of a hired temporary bodyguard.

"Hey, Ran, it's good to see yeh ag'in." said Corey, grinning hugely. He had a thick Scottish accent, while his father's was a soft British.

"Hi, Mr. Buschemi, nice to meet you." Said Kou, offering a hand.

"Hello. You must be one of the guitarists, my son was telling me." He said, smiling. Small wrinkles webbed out from the corners of his eyes as he smiled, giving him a fatherly warmth that I liked immediately.

"My name's Kou. This is my brother Adrian." He said. Adrian shook Caleb's hand next and Corey looked beside himself with excitement. I guess he never thought he'd get to meet the Destroyers in person. I smiled at him and held a hand out.

"Hey. First concert?" I asked him. If he was a fan, which I didn't doubt, he would already know who we all were.

"Gods, yes. 'Ah love the Destroyers. You're mah fav'rite." He replied, shaking my proffered hand. Flattered, I smiled.

"Shall we get on with the show? I'm a bit curious to find out if you gentlemen are really as good as my son says you are." Said Caleb, with a hint of challenge in his voice, although the overall manner was rather polite.

"Good? _Good? _Buddy, we are the best metal band this century, of course we're good." Boasted Freddy. Blacky followed him out of the bus, waiting in case Freddy collapsed before he made it into the building. If he did, Blacky would scoop him onto his broad, furry back and wisk him inside as fast as he could. As I was thinking, a chilly wind bit through my thin shirt, making me shiver.

"C'mon, let's get inside, I'm fuing freezing." I complained. I reached into my shirt pocket and made sure my bottle of Codeine was still there. It was and I was momentarily reassured.

"Throw it out, Guppie. You don't need that." Said Ran in an undertone. Had she seen it? It seemed impossible, but maybe it had a little water in it. Maybe that's how she knew.

"Need what?" I asked innocently.

"You know what." She hissed back. I rolled my eyes, but did as she said anyway, tossing it into a wastebasket as we entered the building through a back door, so as to avoid the crowd. It was annoying, but a new shipment of 'stuff' was on its way from our contact soon anyway. Nothing big, just illegal cigarettes, my Codeine, and something not really suitable to put on a public fanfic site. Let's just say Blacky needs an extra large. Come on people, we're in a rock band!

The inside of the Civic Center, (the backstage anyway) was one narrow hallway with a staircase in it, which eventually led to a few huge, adjoined bathrooms and some smaller "dressing room" type things. This was where we were headed now.

"Hey, sorry guys, you'll have to get in line like the rest. Here." Said Freddy, all warmed up now. He handed Caleb and Corey some plastic tags, saying 'with the band', which would make sure they were first in line.

"Oh. Okay." Said Corey, looking quite dejected. Ran rolled her eyes at him.

"It won't kill you." She said.

Corey responded by cheerfully giving her the finger. She gave it right back and the Buschemi's bodyguard led them back up and out of the Center, presumably around to the front.

I looked to Freddy and he raised his eyebrows, a ring and a barbell in each.

"What?" he asked. I shook my head, my dreds waving in my face, and, brushing them behind my shoulders, (or lack there of; I have no bones) I headed over to where all our equipment was waiting for us. My drum kit lay in pieces, having been disassembled in order to be brought inside. There were two bass drums, about four different types of snares, two floor toms, several different regular toms (the ones attached to the bass), about nine or ten different symbols, and then of course, there was the special effects pieces, the ridiculously small electronic drum pads and the little mini symbols. All in all, it was about 35 or 40 piece set, and it was also one of my smaller ones.

"Hey, where's Damon?" I called, standing up straight. There were crew everywhere, but among them, I spotted him, taking inventory of everything on a clipboard. I picked up a small twig on the ground, probably brought in by someone's boot, and chucked it at him. It bounced harmlessly off his arm and he looked up at me.

"Something wrong, Gup?" he asked.

"No, I was just wondering. What time we supposed to go on again?" I asked, knowing he couldn't hear me but knowing he was an expert at reading lips.

"Woa, jeez, we better get this stuff onstage, you guys are one in ten minutes!" he said, looking at his watch.

"Come on, people, let's get this stuff out there, the guys still need to get ready and we're late as it is!" he called to the others. The sound crew and the few roadies we had immediately began picking our equipment up, piece by piece and bringing it through another long, slightly wider hallway, leading onstage. There was a huge room off to my left containing several rusted, chipped sinks, spotty mirrors and several toilets and urinals, and a dirty tiled floor.

"Hey, in here!" I called. They followed me in, with the possible exception of Ran, and Freddy dumped the plastic shopping bag he had out onto the floor. It spilled a myriad of makeup in various shades of blue, red, orange and, predominantly, black, along with everything from spiked bracelets, armbands and chokers, to our stage clothes. We hastily grabbed what was ours and I grabbed my black eyeliner, red eye shadow and a small plastic package containing my various other tongue rings. I had a different one for when I had to sing, which was smaller and made it easier for me to talk.

I pulled my thin, torn green tank off and pulled a regular black t-shirt on. It was slightly smaller than my other one, because it was my workout shirt, and showed off my skinny but muscular body. I slipped a few spikes on and began doing my makeup. The others were already ready, except Freddy, who had to go around a lot of metal with his black lipstick and eye shadow. He had a thing of X-treme Hair Glue open by his elbow, and since I was done, I grabbed it and began spiking his bangs for him. All I had on was the black eyeliner and a lot of orange eye shadow. Over to my right, the twins were helping each other with their makeup and since Blacky had only to dab on some dark blue eye shadow, we were all almost ready. The twins wore identical jet black clown tears under their eyes, identical black tank tops and near-identical spike chokers.

"Thanks." Said Freddy, watching me fix his hair in the mirror. I was rubbing gobs of the gel into his bangs and absentmindedly tore the scrunchie thing out that was holding the rest of his long, blonde hair back.

"We got three minutes." Said Blacky in his deep, growling voice, and I hastily washed my sticky hands off under a tap.

"I'm not even going onstage and _I'm_ getting an adrenaline rush." Ran admitted.

"Eh, don't worry. Just wait sidestage with the roadies and try not to blow your eardrums out like Damon, and it'll be fine." Freddy assured her, tossing his hair back and loosening himself up for the show. She still looked excited.

I picked up six spike-tipped drumsticks off the floor, one of my many custom designs, and twirled them experimentally through the air. Ran watched me, impressed.

"What, can't do that?" I asked, smirking.

"No, not really." She said.

"Maybe I'll teach you sometime, then." I said.

"Cool."

Damon poked his head in.

"Todd and Mitch are out there already. You guys all set?" he asked.

"Yeah." Said Freddy. He was just lacing up his ankle-length black boots, replete with a red anarchy symbol on the sides and skulls and crossed bones for the buckles.

"Good. You're on." He said. Ran grinned nervously, Freddy was taking deep breaths, the twins were grinning from ear to ear and Blacky was flexing his huge, powerful muscles and wings, the membranes extending from the undersides of his wrists and forearms. I smiled, loving the adrenaline rush, and I led them out.

Fully costumed and pumped full of adrenaline, the Destroyers walked out onstage to an explosion of cheers.

The lighting was orange, red, black (which made everything purple), white and, of course, blue. Behind the drum rise was about a million different TV monitors, at the moment spelling out the name of the band, but as we walked out, it began to reflect our movements. It was like one big TV, only you were looking at us live at the same time.

Our stuff was all set up, and I hopped up onto the drum rise and stood behind my kit. The twins grabbed their guitars off the huge amplifier and each hooked one prong-ended tentacle into their instruments. There was a deep hum and a blue-white glow surrounded both their tentacle and their guitars. The started tuning, which made the crowd go nuts. Squinting through the lights, sweat already starting to run down my face, I spotted Corey Buschemi, jumping up and down like a maniac, all dignity forgotten. Grinning, I positioned the microphone closer to the set and began a four armed multiple drum roll, hitting every drum I had. The sound was like several bombs going off at once.

"Sorry 'bout that!" I just barely heard one of our audio techs shout. He was fiddling with the levers on the boards, and the next time I tried it, it was better, still very loud, but only because the speakers were right in front of me.

"WELCOME, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TO IOWA! HEY, RAISE YOUR HANDS PEOPLE, HOW MANY OF YOU TRAVELED FROM DIFFERENT STATES OR DIFFERENT FUING COUNTIRES … JUST TO BE HERE?" Freddy yelled through his mike. There was a tremendous scream at this, and I distinctly saw about a million hands, paws, claws and tentacles go up, Caleb and his sons' in particular.

I looked to the side and saw Ran, screaming and cheering with the rest of them, and I felt a surge of protectfullness for her, why I had no fucng idea.

_Relax, she'll be fine_ I told myself.

"WELL! WHAT THE HELL'RE YOU WAITING FOR!" he screamed. He looked back at me, gave me a thumbs up, and I raised al four arms. As he began talking next, I counted the beat with my sticks.

"LEEEET'S FUUIIIIN' ROOOOOOOOCCKKK!" he screamed, and I began an insane, multi-armed drum solo, the twins on guitar doing a furiously fast-paced tremolo picking down on the highest fret, Blacky furiously punching the thick strings of his bass. The sound was explosive, and I saw Ran on the side, screaming and head banging. I laughed in spite of myself, thinking that she'd be better off in the crowd with the rest of the 'destroyers', the ones who gave a concert their all and head banged 'till they hurt, screamed 'till they lost their voice and got so close they went temporarily deaf. We admired people like that, and that was how we'd chosen our name, to honor those ones who laid off the drugs and simply came to a concert to have a good time.

"ARE YOU READY TO FUIN' ROCK, IOWA!" Freddy screamed, walking back and forth across stage, taunting the crowd.

"YES!" they screamed back.

"THEN HERE WE GO, LET'S GO!" he screamed angrily, baring his fangs and roaring, a high-pitched shriek from someone's nightmares.

"HAVE YOU EV'AH FELT LOST INSIDE

YOU COULDA DIED!

AN' HAVE YOU EV'AH FELT BORED AN' TIRED

YOU WERE RETIRED!

WELL LEME TELL YA SUMTHIN'!

I AM HERE TO GET YOUR ASS UP

SO WHAT UP?

BACK UP!

AND SHUT UP!

WE ARE HERE TO GET YOU WIRED!"

"HAVE YOU EVER LAID OUT IN THE ROAD

THINKIN' THERE IS NO WHERE TO GO

CHEER UP

SING A SONG

JUST GIVE UP YOUR GHOST

AN' DON'T BE AFRAID TO SURVIVE!"

Freddy sang the main verse. The crowd was going crazy, there were already about four different mosh pits going on, and I was giving all my concentration to my drumming. Mucous sweat rolled off my body in sheets, and even as I played, one of my sticks was cracking down the middle. I motioned to someone offstage, and Ran noticed me. I stopped drumming a second, threw her the broken stick, and someone handed her a new one and she tossed it back to me. I immediately started playing again. There was a part just ahead, a thre beat grunge sound with a pause in between, where the drums, guitar, bass and lyrics all went as one and I knew the pyrotechnics were going to go off, making it even louder, so I readied myself. It happened when he started pausing in the words to the song. Freddy sang on.

"SO LIFE SUCKS?

SO WHAT?

YOU SHOULDA KNOWN ALL THE TIME!

THAT SOME-TIMES

WHAT IS REAL CAN SEEM SO FCK OUTTA LINE!

SO WHAT YOU

WAIT – ING FOR!

GET YOUR ASS

OFF – THAT – FLOOR!

REMEMBER;

LIFE GOES ON

THIS AIN'T THE END UH THE ROAD!

SO STOP THINKIN' 'BOUT THE ROPE!

WE ARE NOT YOU'RE SOURCE OF ENTERTAINMENT!

WE ARE HERE TO GET YOUR

ASS!

UP!"

At this point, the twins and Blacky changed the guitar riffs, this time doing a bunch of single power chords and going in time with my new beat, which was a simplified one-two-three hit of both floor toms, two snares, and both bass drums.

After the twin's solo, in which Kou did one thing, and Adrian answered back, I had one drum solo with Blacky, and I gave it my all.

From the side lines, Ran was smiling, a flush in her unhealthy, nearly translucent face and a strange, excited sparkle in her eyes.

Cool song, no? I write all my own stuff, you can check some of it out at my own website! www.schizophrenicsrus. I still have a lot to do on it, but I will get it up!


	12. Hanging backstage

Hey all you crazyass fans out there, sorry it took so damn long to get a new chapter up, but I've been moving and I'm in college now, so I haven't had a lot of time.

Anyway, I AM still working on this one, so please continue to read.

Heavy metal forever, and stay sic.

P.S. YOU CAN CHECK OUT PICTURES OF THE BAND AT MY WEBSITE. Go to click on LINKS in the left hand corner, click on STAFF/ALUMNI, then look for my name, Zavier, at www.schizophrenicrus. from there, check out my art gallery.

Sorry for beating it around the bush, but you can't really get to my site any other way.

Please review about them!

RBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBR

We were on our last song when it happened. I lost control again.

The drum I was currently playing on simply exploded at my touch, sending slivers of metal under my skin so that I cried out in pain. One of the twins noticed it, but I shoed them away with an impatient wave of my hand, saying that the show must go on.

Besides, I had plenty of other drums to make up for it.

I continued playing till the end of the show, droplets of my own blood flying with my flailing body as I gave it my all. When the show ended, Freddy came over to me, looking concerned. While the rest of the crew started to clean up to make way for the rookie bands, Ran came out onstage and gently nudged Freddy aside.

"What happened?" she asked, seeing the slivers of metal in me and the pieces of plastic that had become embedded in my skin. I was bleeding in several places, but oddly, it didn't really hurt.

The crowd was beginning to file out, even though the show wasn't technically over yet, and the scavengers in the crowd were still picking morosely through the debris lying about on the floor.

I held out an arm for Ran's inspection, and she gently lowered her mouth to the biggest piece of metal there, about the length of one of my fingers. She bared her long, curving fangs and slowly sunk them into my flesh. I felt a sharp pain there, then nothing, as the morphine based pain killer in her poison spread through the wound.

"This feels really weird." I admitted. Blacky nodded in understanding. Despite his three broken arms, he had still played a show, not faltering at all in his usual routine. He had simply resisted from jumping around and head banging, was all. He padded over on two legs, because he didn't have a choice, and Damon trotted over and inspected my wounds.

"Hey, we should take this backstage, don't you guys have two people with backstage passes waitin' for you?" he said.

"Yeah, we do." Said Freddy distractedly, watching as Ran carefully inserted one claw tipped finger into my arm and extracted the metal there.

"Even though they said not to look for them until the show in the UK." He added under his breath, and I laughed out of sheer exhaustion.

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up, Gup." She said, smiling at her little joke and leading me backstage by the hand. I let her. Blacky followed us out while Freddy stayed behind with his brother to help the roadies get everything offstage for the other bands.

Once we were backstage in our little dressing room, Ran made me sit down while she attended to my other wounds. There was a particularly nasty little sliver of drum metal stuck in the front of my waist and I winced in pain as I sat.

"Wha' happened?" asked Corey. He and his father were sitting in moth eaten chairs, waiting for us. For a billionaire, Caleb looked quite comfortable in the less than luxurious chairs.

"It's a little hard to explain." I replied, wincing again as her fangs pierced my upper forearm.

"I assume you know what you're doing?" asked Caleb, looking quite bewildered at her actions. She reared her magnificent head up to peer at him under her eyelids, poison dribbling out her open mouth, and he gulped and backed away.

"It would seem…you do." He answered himself. Corey looked at his father in amazement. I guess he had never seen his dad truly creeped out before.

"Lemme start at the beginning. The twins are electric, like eels because that's the way they're supposed to be. It's in their gene pool. I am electric because it was a sort of a birth defect in me. Whenever I get angry, I just loose control over it and I end up blowing something up on accident. That's how the fire in my house started when I was three or four." I explained. Ran "oh"'d in understanding, and since no one questioned it, I elaborated.

"I can't control the electricity in my body, and I never have been able to. I probably never will. All I know is that whenever I have an extreme excess of emotion, something blows up as if it was whipped with a telephone wire."

"Yeah, good thing we're here to ground you, eh, Flounder?" said Adrian from the doorway. He and Kou had finally arrived backstage with us. I clenched my fists and bared my fangs and yelled

"_My name is GUPPIE!"_

The others laughed like it was funny, and after awhile, I was forced to join in.

"So, uh…what does one do after a show backstage?" asked Corey nervously. His bodyguard was standing just behind him and his father, looking haughty and bored.

"Well, first off, I think we should do something for Ranekaera, our official, unofficial nurse, for saving our asses back there." Said Freddy reverently.

We all murmured our agreement, and Kou yelled "Hear, hear!"

Ran looked nervous at this show of sudden warmth and affection, and responded to it by leaning on my lap and lowering her face down to my midsection. I pushed myself up with my hands on the arm of the chair, muscles tense and my hormones suddenly dancing the tango.

"Stop tensing up and relax, or this thing's not gonna come out." She snapped. I tried to loosen up, but it was hard.

And speaking of hard…(nevermind, or the ff site will boot me off for misrating this thing!)

I finally loosened up enough for her to bite my stomach and ease the piece of metal out with one of her lesser fangs, and I relaxed at last as she pulled away.

"How is she doing that?" asked Corey, staring at his friend in fascination as if he had never seen her properly before.

She gave us all a look and rolled her eyes.

"You guys explain." She said wearily, sagging into an empty chair and closing her eyes. We laughed and filled the two in on what was happening.

Well, did ya like it? Please review!


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